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Court OKs Guantánamo groin searches

A federal appeals court has given its legal blessing to more intrusive searches of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, overturning a district court judge's decision rejecting the new procedures.

In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the new policy of probing into a prisoner's groin area and alongside his clothed genitals is a reasonable security measure that U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth was wrong to prohibit.

"The only question for us is whether the new policies are rationally related to security. We have no trouble concluding that they are, in no small part because that is the government’s view of the matter," Judge Thomas Griffith wrote, joined by Judges Merrick Garland and Karen Lecraft Henderson. "Guantánamo officials explained that they adopted the new search policies to address the risk to security posed by hoarded medication and smuggled weapons."

Lamberth concluded that the rules, which usually require an inmate to submit to four searches to make a phone call or counsel or meet with counsel, were a pretext to limit communication between prisoners and their attorneys. Those lawyers said some prisoners, many of whom are devout Muslims, were refusing meetings because of unwillingness to submit to the new searches. However, the appellate court said Lamberth jumped too quickly to the conclusion that the new procedures were designed or intended to discourage such meetings.

"The district court drew inferences from past conduct by former commanders and dismissed as unbelievable the sworn statements of military officials. We find such an approach unwarranted," Griffith wrote. "The tenuous evidence of an improper motive to obstruct access to counsel in this case cannot overcome the legitimate, rational connection between the security needs of Guantánamo Bay and thorough searches of detainees."

Griffith also said that inmates who were deterred by the new procedures from calling or visiting their lawyers could communicate with them by letter instead.

A lawyer for Guantánamo detainees, David Remes, expressed regret about the ruling but said he hoped the searches would be curtailed by a new Guantánamo commander.

"The decision upholding the invasive and humiliating genital searches is a disappointment, but a new commander has taken the place of the commander who instituted the search procedure, and we are hopeful that the new commander will end the searches or at least ensure that they're conducted less invasively," Remes said.

Griffith was appointed by President George W. Bush, Garland by President Bill Clinton and Henderson by President George H.W. Bush.

Lamberth's order blocking the new search procedures, when used on prisoners communicating with their lawyers, was put on hold by a different panel of the D.C. Circuit soon after being issued last July.

UPDATE (Friday, 10:46 A.M.): This post has been updated with comment from Remes.